BIOGRAPHY
|
THE 1970S Paul joins
jazz/rock fusion band Warm Dust
on keyboards, releasing three
albums: And It Came To Pass (1970), Peace For Our Time (1971),
and Dreams Of Impossibilities (1972). Paul then forms Ace with Warm Dust bassist Tex Comer, and their debut single How Long – written and sung by Paul – becomes a hit on both sides of the
Atlantic. It hits #3 in the US
singles chart and goes top twenty in the UK.
Ace release three albums: Five-A-Side (1974), Time For
Another (1975), and No Strings (1977). When Ace disband,
Paul goes on to become the keyboard player with Roxy Music, appearing on
their albums Manifesto (1979), Flesh + Blood (1980) and Avalon
(1982). |
|
|
THE 1980S Paul leaves Roxy
for Squeeze, replacing Jools Holland on keyboards for
their East Side Story (1981) album.
He sings lead vocals on the band’s biggest hit single to date, Tempted. In ’86 Paul joins Roger Waters’ The Bleeding Hearts Band for the When the Wind Blows soundtrack, a US and European tour and Waters’ Radio K.A.O.S.
album. It was also in the
mid-80s that Paul first teamed up with Mike Rutherford from Genesis to form Mike + The Mechanics.
With Paul on leads vocals and keyboards the band scored two massive
hit singles from their debut album: Silent Running (US #6, UK #21) and
All I Need Is A Miracle (US #5).
Then in 1989, the title track from the band’s second album The Living Years hits #1 in the US, #1 in Canada and #2 in
the UK. Paul began a string of solo albums in the 1980s: Nightbird (1980), Suburban Voodoo (1982), and One Good Reason (1987) which spawned the #9 US hit single Don't Shed A Tear. In between all this he found time to form a live band with Nick Lowe called Noise To Go, and recorded sessions for – among others – The Pretenders (Learning To Crawl, 1983), and The Smiths (The Smiths, 1984). |
|
/cont…
|
THE 1990S The early 90s saw
Paul enjoying continued success with Mike + The Mechanics,
with four more albums: Word of Mouth (1991), Beggar On A Beach Of
Gold (1995), Hits (1996) and M6 (1999). Each one generating a top 40 hit single
but none more so than the 1995 UK #12 hit Over My Shoulder. In 1990, Paul got
back together with Roger Waters for his legendary live performance of The Wall in Berlin.
Paul took lead vocal on the track Hey You, in front of a crowd of
250,000. Paul spent a year
back with Squeeze for their Some Fantastic Place album
and also re-recorded Tempted for the 1994 film Reality Bites. He also spent a year fronting a band
called Spin 1ne 2wo which recorded an album of covers of songs by the likes
of Hendrix, Dylan, The Who and Led Zeppelin. In the mid-90s
when The Eagles reformed, they recorded a song co-written
with Paul Carrack: Love Will
Keep Us Alive. It went to #1 in the US and became the
most-played single on US radio in 1995.
The album it appeared on, Hell
Freezes Over (1994), also hit
#1 in the US. |
|
|
THE 2000S Paul started to
work increasingly in his own right in the 2000s. Having only found time for one solo album – Blue Views
(1996) – in the 90s, the noughties have seen a string of increasingly
personal, increasingly subtle and increasingly acclaimed solo albums: Satisfy
My Soul (2000), Groovin' (2001), It Ain't Over (2003), Winter
Wonderland (2005), Old, New, Borrowed and Blue (2007). Paul continues to
appear live and on record with all sorts of collaborators. In 2003 he toured extensively with Ringo Starr, having appeared on records in the late 90s/early 00s by BB King, Eric Clapton and Elton John. Paul’s organ playing can be heard on the
biggest selling UK single of all time – Elton’s Something About The Way You Look Tonight/Candle in the Wind ‘97. In 2007 The Eagles released another massive hit album - Long Road Out Of Eden - which featured another of Paul’s songs, I Don't Want To Hear Anymore. It hit #1 in the US, UK, Australia and New
Zealand |
|
www.carrack-uk.com | myspace.com/carrack